


The Time Before

by rudyjj



Category: The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: M/M, Self Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 15:33:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2657204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudyjj/pseuds/rudyjj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Thomas, before the escape, there was just the Glade. It was a time of peace, people going about their day to day lives without change. and this is a story about that, a story about the lives of the Gladers before everything went wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Time Before

Alby’s eyes peeled open, tired and sore. His body was as well, he felt as though he hadn’t eaten in three days. It was dark, all around him. Alby tried to stand, feeling around him. His hands came into contact with a thin metal wall around him, perforated with holes. The wall was vibrating, that’s when Alby realized he and the cage were moving. They were going upwards at a steady pace, what he could see of the walls outside the cage were moving downward. When his eyes started to adjust, he say the crates and duffel bags around him. WICKED was stamped on every one of them, on all sides. It was ominous, until he noticed the small dot at the end of each letter. An acronym. What organization would be unfortunate to have that as a title?  
Alby hadn’t realized how long he had been in that box of metal gradually rising until he found himself pounding on the sides of the lift. He only stopped when he put a dent into the thin metal, his confinement shaking precariously on his cables. He sunk down on the wall, running a hand over his face. Alby stayed there, for how long he couldn’t count until gradually, the moving stopped. Doors above his head slid open slowly, screeching like they had never been opened before.  
Brilliant light burst into where Alby was sitting. It was blinding, Alby’s eyes squeezing shut after being in the darkness for so long. The light was warm too, he hadn’t even realized how cold he was until it fell upon his shivering skin. He slowly opened his eyes, adjusting to the new light source. Alby stood up and pulled himself out of the box of metal he had been in, using one of the crates for support. When he got out he collapsed on his back before he could even look at his surroundings. Even after that time of sitting doing nothing he was unexplainably exhausted. How long had he even been in there? Half an hour? Two hours? Ten minutes? Alby didn’t have any idea.  
After a minute of lying there peacefully, his mind falling into a bliss of not thinking Alby sat up. Those doors could open, and they could very well close. He lay flat on his stomach, head and arms over the edge, pulling up the bags and crated that had been send with him. One by once Alby pulled them up, throwing them haphazardly behind him. Once every package was up and resting behind him, they doors closed, screaming in protest. The metal that made up the sliding doors looked new, they could’ve at least been oiled.  
Alby finally raised his head and got a bearing on his surroundings. Massive, looming stone walls surrounded him on every side, enclosing a square of green grass and tall trees. The walls were only broken b small section cut out of them, what could only be doors. Far off to Alby’s left a small shabby building was set in front of a fenced in area. Enclosed in the barbed wire were various animals, livestock you’d expect to find on a farm. Alby could see the corner of another building in the opposite direction, one looking to be made out of stone instead of wood like the others.  
Alby didn’t know where he was, or for that matter who he was. Only one thing stuck out in his mind, his name. Alby. He knew nothing about his surroundings, or how he had gotten there. He strained his mind, searching in his head for any memory, but to no avail. The farthest back his memory reached he was inside that awful claustrophobic box. He tried harder, trying to grasp anything he could but there was still nothing, as if a wall was built blocking the memories he knew were there.  
***  
It had been two weeks and Alby was starting to talk to himself. He needed a voice, besides the one in his head, even it was his own. He had been marking the days heed been here on the side of a tree, fourteen. Exactly two weeks. A fortnight. Half a month. God he really needed to talk to someone.  
“Well the box thing came back up a week ago with some supplies and exactly seven days before that with me so really it should be up again today following that pattern.” Alby said aloud. His words were rushed, filling up the silence in the air around him.  
In the two weeks since he had been here he had planted some of the seeds that had come up with him. Alby wasn’t entirely sure how much care each type of plant needed so he just watered each one when it looked dry and made sure not bugs of weeds got too close.  
Alby had been out into the stone walls a few times, but after realizing the doors closed at dusk and stayed shut until daybreak he always made sure he was back a good few hours before they closed. After the first visit out there he determined that the massive walls formed a maze. After the first time he had trouble finding his way back Alby quickly learned to pull a Hansel and Gretel and leave trails of tree branches every few feet.  
He had been hearing things in the maze at night, which he definitely didn’t want to encounter. Alby made sure he brought one of the long serrated knives that had been in one of the duffel bags he dragged out of the rickety elevator. It had taken a few hours to get how to work with it, but Alby found he was surprisingly good at wielding the blade. He doubted that he could use it to kill anything coming at him, but he could fend whatever it was off for a while.  
Alby had also taken time to teach himself how to take care of the livestock. There weren’t many animals so it wasn’t much to worry about, but it took up time and it was something to do. He had had to kill one of the pigs for meat to cook, and it had probably been one of the hardest things he had ever had to do. Well, in the two weeks that he could remember, but as far as he knew it was the worst.  
***  
It had been four weeks. Alby had been alone up here for a whole month. Now he really needed something to do. He found that his routine of waking up early, working in the field all morning and with the livestock in the afternoon actually worsened his need for something to do. It started out at busy work to keep his mind of things but once he got the hang of the work he was doing it became tedious and dull, leaving his mind to wander. He continued talking to himself, but after that wasn’t enough he began to have one-sided conversations with the cows in the livestock pens.  
The elevator was due to come up today, according to the notches Alby had been marking on the tree. He didn’t really need any new supplies, so whoever was sending them had only sent up a few things. He pretty much had everything he could think he needed, meat, produce, water, a place to sleep. The only thing he really didn’t have was something to keep his mind occupied.  
Alby was lying in grass, thinking all this to himself when he heard the familiar creak and groan of the doors to the elevator opening.

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter of all description and no dialogue actually turned out pretty long like? Idek. Anyways this follows the part in tmr movie where alby was alone in the glade for a month. Also I haven’t read the first book in a while so im not exactly sure of all of alby’s characterization so I guess suggestions would be nice? Again I don’t know whatever. Also based on the tags on this you can probably guess whose coming up in the box ;)


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